Goldman\’s ‘muppet hunt’ comes up empty: FT

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Remember Greg Smith, the unhappy Goldman Sachs employee who used the New York Times’s op-ed page to slam the bank for what he described as a contemptuous attitude toward its own clients — an attitude that led bankers to regularly denigrate clients as easily manipulated “muppets”?

The Financial Times on Thursday reported that the March incident, which was the latest in a run of bad publicity for the often-vilified banking giant, prompted an internal probe. Goldman’s investigation of itself yielded little to back up Smith’s allegations, the report said. The most entertaining part of the story, though, surrounds the bank’s efforts to hunt down any evidence bankers were in fact comparing customers to the likes of Kermit and Fozzy.

“The investigators interviewed dozens of staff and sifted through millions of emails, finding about 4,000 ‘muppet’ references. But they said 99% of those referred to last year’s movie of the same name,” the FT reported.

Goldman’s pushback comes as a book by Smith, entitled “Why I Left Goldman Sachs,” is readied for publication later this month. The FT said the internal probe couldn\’t substantiate any of Smith’s claims, recommending to the bank’s board that no further action be taken.

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